After spending two weeks in Villa Corona, I was ready to move on back to Guadalajara. I wanted to visit the historic downtown that the guide books talk about being one of the most authentic in the country and also wanted to visit some art venues. On the road, I stopped at a Pemex and fueled up. While there I wandered over to the ATM and stuffed my card in the machine. Got my cash and my receipt and turned around and walked off, completely forgetting my card. I am so use to swipe the card and put it back in your wallet, that I didn’t think about it. So it got sucked back into the ATM after a few minutes. Or at least I think it did, since that’s the way most of those machines work if you forget and wander off.
I got to the San Jose Trailer park early in the day and settled in quickly. Found a Canadian nearby who had satellite WiFi for rent and connected right up, for $5 per week. He introduced me to a lovely young lady who does tours of Guad for just $300 pesos plus gas and lunch.
All settled in at the San Jose RV Park
After being here in the park for a couple hours, I realized I didn’t have my debit card! Great, no getting cash when I needed. I figured out where I’d lost it and imposed on one of the people at the park to drive me back to the ATM. After checking around the machine and at the store and the Pemex office, I figured it was sucked into the machine and since I had no idea how to get it back out here in Mexico, I just left it for the fates to worry about. After all, I still had my credit card so I could get cash that way, si? With that in mind, I called up my lost card service and canceled the card. Funny thing, I was able to use my T-Mobile phone to make two 800 number calls, then it just stopped working with an ‘out of service area’ error. I was trying to call the same numbers so that wasn’t it, I was in the same place and I had a good signal so that wasn’t it. Eventually, I had to borrow a phone, Verizon, to be able to make another call to the same number! Stupid T-Mobile.
Well, using my credit card for cash wasn’t to be that easy. I had the card all right, and I was able to use it to buy groceries the next day, but when I tried it at an ATM for cash it came back with the dreaded, ‘Wrong PIN’ error. Tried it at 3 ATMs (Mexican grocery big box stores always have 2 to 5 of the ATMs from different banks). Wary of the damn things sucking in my card and keeping it, I only tried 3 PIN guesses before moving to the next machine. After that, back home, I spent over an hour going through all my papers trying to find the sheet that had my PIN on it. No luck. I’d never used the card for cash so the PIN was not in my memory. Finally, I called my bank and ordered a copy of my PIN. My bank has no expedited service for lost cards, or stolen cards, or if you have forgotten a PIN. Ten to fourteen days, I was told. No way to hurry it up. And they could only snail mail it to my address on record. No expedited service what-so-ever for a traveler using their cards and having a problem. Damn!
So, I ordered the PIN, then emailed my brother, who’s address I use for banking, letting him know the cards PIN would be there in 10-14 days and to watch for it. Meanwhile, I imposed on friends at the park to allow me to buy their groceries and pay me back in pesos so I’d have cash. Eventually, I got the PIN and all was right with the world again but while without it was very annoying not to have cash or to have to mess around getting cash. Lots of places here in Mexico don’t have swipe machines to begin with so you really need cash if you’re going to be buying things. Even the RV Park swipe machine wasn’t always working.
My immediate need of cash was solved by friends so I could go wandering off into Guad if I wanted but I still didn’t have a bike, which meant I had to walk nearly everywhere. But there was always the bus, or taxi. Either one would work for whatever I needed but I missed my bike. Or any bike. So, while my tour guide, Myrna, and I were wandering around Guadalajara, I explained my wish for a used bike and asked her to stop at bike shops as we drove around the city. We did finally find a not-too-bad bike for $400 pesos. Since the store only took cash, I left it there with a sold tag on it until I could get the cash.
A look around.
It’s a nicely treed park, which was helpful during mid-day when it swiftly got up to 80°F. It’s around 0.6 miles from the highway with all that noise so it’s nice and quiet. But the place is owned by an 88 year old woman who’s told her 3 sons that as long as she is alive, it will stay an RV park. What’s left of it. A huge part of the park was sold to a developer that turned it into ‘exclusivo’ housing. I talked to the manager of the restaurant/bar owned by one of the sons and he said that the family had been offered $45 million US for the huge piece of property they owned. It’s near many big box stores, a couple huge and new factories and many other expensive properties. But it’s secluded in it’s own way. So, as you can imagine, the brother that ran the RV park part of the property hadn’t done much to maintain it for a while. Saw all sorts of things that needed attention in the electrical service, the bathrooms, the pool. But, I liked my space, and I was able to get my electrical service connected up and working without to much trouble. The circuit breaker was just hanging there next to the power tower by a wire when I parked. Since Guad is high up in the mountains, it got really cold there sometimes. Especially when one of the storms would roll in. At night, I’d use the electric blanket to stay comfortable. During the morning, I would use my electric heater to take the chill off but by noon the temps would be soaring into the 80’s. And then the rest of the afternoon would be balmy, unless it was overcast. It did rain several times while I was there but overall, it was pretty nice.
More tomorrow…